In a speech given at a public forum in Guandong on March 20, 2010, the celebrated Chinese soccer commentator Li Chengpeng drew attention to issues plaguing China’s athletic world.
Drawing upon the two decades of his experience in the field, he discussed a range of issues—from the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs and increased politicization of the sports arena to unscientific training methods and corruption in the administrative system.
Li traced the root of several of the problems in China’s sports arena to extensive interference from governing bodies.
A Third of the Top Athletes Have Doped
Li stated in his speech that at least a third of the top Chinese athletes he knew have abused stimulants.
Li’s is not an isolated voice in raising concerns on Chinese athletes’ abuse of performance-enhancing drugs. Last year, Yuan Weimin, former director of the General Administration of Sports wrote in his book that the “Ma Family Army” had resorted to using drugs. The “Ma Family Army,” a team of women distance runners, had achieved fame by winning world championship titles in 1993.
On July 21, 2008, in a documentary on “The Extent of Stimulant Usage in China,” broadcast by a German TV statopm, Huang Xiaomin, the Chinese silver medal winner of the 200-meter breaststroke in the Seoul Olympic Games stated that in the 80s, members of the Chinese swim team were given stimulants.
“We were given a dose at regular intervals,” she told the documentary producer. “Usually this was carried out in our dormitory room. I had no way of taking it daily as the side effects were too strong.” Huang is now a swim coach in South Korea.
Politicized Sports
“The mistake of the national system is that it only focuses on creating medal winners, while forgetting that the masses need sports ... We have politicized sports too much,” Li said.
In an article published in his blog, he elaborated further, stating that the focus of the system has become creating gold medalists for pushing patriotic sentiments and creating a façade of competence in the international sports arena.
The aggressive and unscientific training meted out to achieve this brings out a few champions and, in the process, leaves many as invalids for life, he said. “I once saw the photo of a prize-winning athlete—a young girl practicing gymnastics. Her body was forcefully pressed to a painful posture ... her facial expression exhibited extreme pain.”
Li writes in his blog that the regime would never focus on popularizing sports, for if sports were popularized, and the masses came to know what fair competition is, and what fair rules are like, they would not be easily suppressed, he says.
Extensive Corruption in the Chinese Football Association
Li spoke extensively on the corruption and in-fighting in the China Football Association (CFA). “I once asked a famous Chinese soccer player whether they had ever thrown a game. He said he was once on the verge of crying when he entered the field and realized his team was divided into three groups, each playing on its own. After a few minutes of play, he burst out laughing, realizing that the opposition team was also divided into three. Six teams were competing on the same field,” according to a quote from Li’s speech in the Southern Metropolis Daily.
Commenting on the fall of Nan Yong, the former vice chairman of the CFA who was recently incarcerated for his involvement in a match-fixing scandal, Li said, “Nan Yong was the vice president of the Chinese Football Association Super League Co., Ltd, and that gave him the authority to appoint a general manager and finance staff of his choice. Under such a system, without any mechanism for supervision, it would be strange if Nan had not become corrupt.”
Li attributed the Chinese football team’s poor performance to the management system. “The government wants to control things that should not be in its jurisdiction.”
Li also wrote a satiric remark about the government’s interference: “Chinese soccer may, in the future, no longer be managed by the CFA, but perhaps by some institute for studying unknown biological specimens in the Chinese Academy of Sciences.”
Read the original Chinese article.
